


About Life and Stuff

by Nimori



Category: Prince of Tennis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 01:18:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nimori/pseuds/Nimori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eiji has this idea (only not), and then Oishi and Fuji make it worse (only better), and Tezuka ruins a pair a shoes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	About Life and Stuff

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dhorz](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=dhorz).



See, it happens like this:

Fuji and Eiji make plans to rent an apartment together after high school, only Eiji might have possibly made the exact same plans with Oishi in junior high (a whole five years ago and they never spoke of it again until four months before university classes begin when Oishi starts looking at the classifieds and Eiji says _What are you doing_ and Oishi says _Apartment hunting for us, silly_ and Fuji says _Hmmm_ in that voice that means he's thinking about opening his eyes).

The thing about Eiji is that he has a talent for gymnastics, physical and verbal. In twenty minutes flat he convinces both of them (and himself) that his brilliant plan all along was for the three of them to live together and what better way for Seigaku's former regulars to stay friends forever than to share an apartment in university?

The thing about Oishi is that he has a particularly weak Eiji-immune system. The thing about Fuji is that he is always ready take someone else's idea too far. Yes, Oishi and Fuji find themselves agreeing, it _would_ be cool if the Seigaku regulars lived together.

So Fuji invites Kawamura, who tries to refuse only his father overhears and yells at him to go live with his friends and enjoy his college years, and Oishi invites Tezuka, who does refuse but then lets the arrangement slip to Inui, who invites himself in Tezuka's place.

And that's how they all move into a slightly run-down four-bedroom western-style house in Kichijoji, even Tezuka because Fuji forged his signature on the lease and it was either live with his former teammates or have them arrested for fraud -- and after six years together Tezuka finds he rather likes some of them.

****

They give Tezuka the master bedroom in apology. Fuji stakes a claim on the room with the south-western exposure, so his cacti can bask in the afternoon light (they're not morning cacti, he says). By communal vote (5-1), Eiji is given the smallest room, an arrangement which lasts nine days before Oishi gives in and switches with him.

The attic is Inui's. He has enough room for his computers and notebooks and blenders and the unidentifiable fungus he is growing in a jar, and no one has to risk life or limb or accidental juice ingestion passing by his door.

Kawamura sleeps in the den, which doesn't have a door or a closet but at least it's a whole floor away from everyone else if he rolls over onto his racket in the middle of the night.

****

Tezuka comes home and steps in pizza. His is not the first footprint in the cheese, and he frowns as he puts on his slippers and carries his shoes to the kitchen.

"I'm home," he says automatically as he brings his shoes to the sink. "Why is there a pizza on the floor?"

"It's not mine," Eiji says at once. "I'm not picking it up."

"I've done twenty-point-eight percent of the housework this month," Inui says. "That's already four-point-one percent more than my share."

"Wait," Oishi says. "Does the thumb metacarpal connect to the trapezium, or is it the trapezoid? No, maybe it's the triquetral. Oh, my god, I'm late for class." He scoops up his open binder, crushing his notes, and bolts for the door. There's a crash and then, "Guys, watch your step, there's a pizza on the floor!" and the door slams.

"But why," Tezuka says again, dabbing at his shoe with a damp dishcloth, "is it there?"

"Kaidoh and Momo were over earlier and ordered it," Fuji says. He's decorating a cake, for no apparent reason, with wobbly orange teacups. "They started arguing over whose turn it was to pay and dropped it."

"Why didn't anyone pick it up?" Tezuka demands.

"Hoi," says Eiji, fingers in the icing. "Why didn't you?"

Tezuka blinks and looks down at his shoes (leather; ruined). Then he goes to get the mop.

The cake, it turns out, is for Fuji's cacti to celebrate Cinco de Mayo; the teacups are sombreros.

****

The first time the fire department arrives at their house (green smoke pouring from the attic window), all the neighbours come out to watch, standing on their lawns in yukatas and slippers, in their track pants and sneakers and pajamas and robes, gawking.

The thirty-second time (colourless noxious fumes accompanied by short sharp cracks like defective fireworks going off) no one even looks around, not even when Eiji marches out in shorts and flip-flops to supervise the proceedings, carting a lawn chair in one hand and dragging a cooler full of beer with the other.

"Just email us a list of the ingredients, Inui-kun," says the paramedic after the firefighters give the all clear. "Oh, no thank you, Eiji. I'm on duty -- hey, are you even old enough to be drinking?"

****

Inui and Oishi are at ToDai. Tezuka, Fuji, and Eiji are at Seishun University, and Kawamura is taking a bookkeeping course at the local junior college. Their schedules vary wildly, so one Saturday a month Fuji rounds them all up and through a combination of threats, bribes and blackmail forces them to engage in an hour or two of 'family time.'

"I have a family," Eiji grumbles. "I moved in with you guys to get away from them." He never sulks for long though, especially when Fuji lets him pick their activity.

Sometimes (most of the time) they play tennis. Sometimes they play billiards or go bowling, and once Fuji dragged them to Chiba for a game of beach volleyball, but they ran into some guys from Rokkaku and it ended in Eiji punching Davide over a misunderstood pun and Inui losing a bet to Saeki and having to wear a dress and a red wig to class on Monday. (No one is surprised when he is able to borrow both from Fuji.)

Sometimes they go to museums or festivals, and at least once a month they return to the high school courts to heckle Momo and Kaidoh and to remind the girls following Horio around that he had a unibrow in junior high.

"Go back to your own school," Horio shouts at Fuji and Eiji, who have collapsed into giggles as Tomoka reminisces about his wardrobe of green shirts. "And you, shut up. I was twelve. My mom bought my clothes."

"She should have bought you tennis lessons," says Katsuo, grinning; he and Kachirou have just trounced Horio and Ishida.

"I have seven years' tennis experience." Horio turns up his collar and fluffs out his hair, which he has, sometime in the last month, dyed blond. "If Kaidoh-buchou would just stop trying to make me play doubles--"

"Hey, where's Ryuuzaki's granddaughter?" Kawamura asks, looking around. "She never used to miss a practice."

"Girls' under-eighteen semi-finals are today," Katsuo says. "We'd be there cheering if we didn't have that match with Rikkai next week."

"Yeah." Kachirou tips his head and his hair falls in his eyes. He looks entirely too innocent to be one half of a team nicknamed Avalanche Pair. "Didn't Tezuka-buchou tell you she entered?"

Fuji's eyes open. Tezuka wriggled out of this month's excursion, claiming a prior commitment that not even Fuji's considerable talent at knowing other people's business could ferret out. "And why would Tezuka know Ryuuzaki-chan's schedule?" he asks, stepping closer, smiling.

Kachirou gives him a wide-eyed stare and then very deliberately steps behind Katsuo. "Er. He's kind of been coaching her for the last ten months."

****

The thing about living with his old teammates, Tezuka thinks as he returns from dinner with Ryuuzaki's family to find his bed short-sheeted and every item in his closet turned inside out and hung neatly back in place, is that his old teammates include Fuji and Eiji.

"Well?" Eiji demands, hands on hips. The others are lined up behind him, sporting glowers of varying strength. "Did she win at least?"

Tezuka allows himself a small smile, and his housemates spend the next twenty minutes hollering and throwing things at him.

"She didn't want anyone to know she was training for the All-Japan tournament," he tells Oishi later, as Oishi is helping him turn his clothes inside-in. "They'd follow her to watch, and in the beginning she still had trouble focusing with that kind of distraction."

"It sounds like you've done a good job coaching her," Oishi says, and then, "Er, don't look in your drawers."

From the dresser, there's an ominous scrabbling sound.

****

The fake I.D. is not Fuji's. Neither is is Inui's. It belongs to Kawamura, who got it from Akutsu, who got it from some guy in a suit whom none of them dare ask about.

Getting Kawamura to _use_ the I.D. however is a delicate procedure involving four people, a tennis racket, and perfectly orchestrated timing. They can't let him in the store _with_ the racket (not after he broke the cooler window, and anyway the clerks tend not to want to sell alcohol to a raving maniac) but if they get him inside and up to the counter with the beer within a few minutes of losing racket contact he can usually make it out without giving himself away by stammering or blushing or fidgeting.

"For the last time, don't tell them how old you are," Eiji says as they hustle their booty and a red-faced Kawamura back to the house. "It's on your I.D., and I'm sure the guy can read."

"We should have him hold the racket for point-two seconds longer," Inui says.

"We should get brandy next time," Fuji says.

"We should throw out this I.D. before we get caught," Kawamura says.

"Brandy?" Eiji looks back at Fuji. "Why brandy?"

"It sounds classy. Also I met an American named Brandy on the train." Fuji's smile fades a bit. "Actually she wasn't that classy. She kept asking me how to get to the pineapple, and then told me I look like divine monkeys."

"Hoi, why didn't you just tell her you speak English?"

As he takes the beer Fuji gives Eiji a puzzled look. "We were speaking English."

****

Mondays and Thursdays, Inui meets Kaidoh at the sports center. Once the data is taken and the training menus are adjusted, it's mainly an excuse to goof around on the courts, experimenting with crazy trajectories only Kaidoh can pull off and developing flukes that only Inui can see potential in.

One afternoon they spot Tezuka and Ryuuzaki two courts over from the one they have booked. Ryuuzaki doesn't notice them, too absorbed in perfecting her oddly angular drop shot; Tezuka sees them but doesn't say anything. Inui and Kaidoh lob the ball back and forth, an exercise more worthy of mediocre elementary-school students. Their attention is one-hundred percent on Tezuka. Tezuka's is one-hundred percent on his student. Even from two courts away, they can see an aspect of her game measurably improve every time Tezuka speaks.

When their time is up they walk to the train station together in utter silence.

"Senpai," Kaidoh says as they approach the platform, hesitant. "Are you--"

"Jealous? Oh yes."

"Me too."

"I live with that guy," Inui says. His voice is louder than usual. "I can't even find out what brand of underwear he wears, let alone get any tennis advice out of him."

Kaidoh is quiet for a bit, and there is twenty-seven percent more alarm in his expression. "Senpai? Why do you need to know what brand of underwear Tezuka-buchou wears?"

"Friction is an important variable in the data," Inui says. "I discovered as much as two milliseconds of variance in speed among all the brands I compared."

"I... see."

"Aren't you curious, Kaidoh?"

Kaidoh sighs. "I _wasn't_," he says, and Inui allows that there are some methods to his data tennis that are probably better kept to himself.

****

Momo only comes over to drink when Tezuka is out. Kawamura will frown but not say anything, and Oishi will say something but no one will listen; Tezuka, while he ignores the alcohol Eiji and Fuji have stockpiled in the linen closet, is firm on the matter of corrupting innocent high school students.

"Now listen," Momo says, standing on the couch and holding up his cell phone, "to my last ten messages from Echizen." He wobbles, and Eiji reaches out to steady him and instead hits him with his beer. "Oi, watch it. Ready? Okay. One: No. Two: No. Three: Dunno. Four: Che. Five: Yes. Six: Stop texting me." There's a bout of laughter and Momo grins. "Seven: No. Eight: You wish. Nine: No. And number ten--"

"Mada mada dane!" chorus Fuji and Eiji and Inui. Kawamura snorts Asahi from his nose and even Oishi forgets to frown for a second. Momo bellows laughter and collapses back to the couch and something inside it cracks.

"Guys, be careful," Oishi says, clutching his physiology textbook so hard he bends the cover. There's a beer in front of him, sitting open and untouched. "If you break the furniture Tezuka won't be happy."

"Nya," Eiji says. "This is our house too. Why should we be afraid of Tezuka?"

And then there are keys in the front door and Eiji leaps up and yells, "Shit, buchou's home, hide the beer!" loudly enough that unless Tezuka has been deafened in a freak accident sometime in the last six hours he will have heard.

So instead of hiding the beer they hide Momo, and he ends up stuck behind the couch for three hours while Tezuka makes them clean the living room.

It's still better than running laps.

****

First semester ends and Eiji fails organic chemistry. Why he was taking organic chemistry in the first place is a mystery to everyone, much like why Oishi's tetras keep dying (Oishi and Tezuka and Kawamura are all feeding them) and how Mizuki keeps getting Fuji's phone number (Yumiko gives it to him) and why Inui is majoring in Japanese literature (the margins of his data notebooks are filled with haiku about vectors and emulsification and the graceful curve of the thorax of the Japanese beetle).

"This is a disaster," Eiji moans, and Oishi wants to tell him he should have spent more time studying and less time telling Oishi not to study so hard, but he can't do it. So instead he offers to tutor Eiji and quietly sets his alarm two hours earlier so he can make up his own lost study time.

After a week of this they hold a meeting while Oishi is in class, and when he returns there is no caffeine to be found in the house. After another week they hold another meeting, and when Oishi gets home he finds himself in the middle of an intervention, and ends up staying up all night to catch up on the five hours of studying he missed while his friends were trying to convince him he studies too much.

After that Fuji starts lacing Oishi's drinks with SleepEaze, and everything's all right again, for a while.

****

At New Year's Katsuo breaks his leg snowboarding. They find out from Kaidoh, when Eiji and Oishi run into him in the grip-tape aisle. Kaidoh is seething at losing his choice of successor, mainly because it means Momo's recommendation -- Kachirou -- will be captain next year.

"It won't be easy," Oishi tells Katsuo in the hospital. Unaware, he flexes his wrist. "Just work hard and trust your partner will be there when you're ready to come back."

"Oh, stop preaching, Oishi," Eiji says. "Katsuo and Kachirou will be fine. Hoi, can I sign your cast?"

"Um," Katsuo says, and looks down at the green scribble where Fuji's signature had been (he'd had to scratch the message out before his mom saw it and yelled at him). "I guess."

One effect of Katsuo's accident is that for most of February Inui is only ever home to sleep; he spends every waking minute in classes or at the high school courts helping Kaidoh retrain Kachirou to work with Horio and Horio to work with anybody. They know Inui still lives there because they keep finding his wet towels on the bathroom floor, but the most they see of him is his back as he's jogging out the door.

The house isn't the same without jars of bugs in the fridge next to the wasabi or random stenches seeping down from the attic. After three weeks of no biohazard emergencies, the fire department calls to find out if they're all right. Fuji invites them over for pizza.

Five of them come. (Two of them bring beer.)

****

They don't find out Echizen is back in Japan until the day before the tournament he's scheduled to play in, when Inui spots his name on the roster. And then they have to stop Eiji from calling up every hotel in Tokyo to find out which one Echizen's staying at, and after that Oishi and Kawamura have to babysit Eiji while Inui and Fuji slip off to track Echizen down through their own respective and equally frightening methods.

Tezuka decides that while Echizen's Japanese cell phone won't work on American networks, he might have kept the number anyway, and excuses himself to his room.

"Buchou," Echizen answers on the second ring, bored, like they speak every day.

"Echizen." There's a long silence, and then Tezuka breaks because Echizen is stubborn and Tezuka has five nosy housemates who don't know how to knock. "University courts, two hours."

"Che," Echizen says and hangs up, but two hours later he's prowling onto the court with his smirk and his California tan and his cap tugged low.

They don't talk much, but they have a long and meaningful conversation with tennis, and that's the only language either of them needs anyway.

****

Most of Seigaku's tennis club, former and current, ambushes Echizen at the tournament (he wins, of course). He shrugs off the cacophony of accusations and congratulations and Eiji's litany of _Ochibi, you bastard!_ and he manages, entirely in monosyllables, to get them to agree to pay for all the sushi he wants. Kawamura-san welcomes them as always, and embarrasses his son first by asking Echizen for his autograph, and then by bringing them a bottle of sake.

"Dad! We're underage," Kawamura mumbles, red-faced and guilty.

"What am I sending you to college for?" Kawamura-san taps his son on the forehead with the bottle. "Live a little!"

"That's right, senpai," Horio says loudly, holding out his cup. "Live a little!"

"No, no, no, you're in high school." Kawamura-san snatches away Horio's cup. "You shouldn't be drinking."

Momo's face falls, and he lowers his own cup.

The sushi comes and there is anago-theft and hijinx with wasabi. Eiji eyes his wallet and encourages Echizen to eat more rice. Momo builds a tower of sake cups and Kaidoh hisses at him when it falls. They have a fight. Oishi yells at them both. Inui takes notes. Tomoka regales Echizen with a (rather exaggerated) account of Sakuno's victory over a senior from Rikkai, and Sakuno stammers and tries to correct her and looks at Tezuka for help that's not coming.

"Your hair's still too long," is all Echizen says, and then: "Ow, Eiji-senpai, that hurts."

****

Echizen returns to America and the house gains an unofficial seventh occupant and it's like the sun set in the arctic in winter. Momo mopes around, following Eiji like some overgrown teenage duckling with big feet and too much gel in his hair. He even cuts class to tag along to Eiji's lectures, and the second time he does Oishi sits him down and delivers a heartfelt and boring monologue on friendship and responsibility and growing up and Momo promises never to ditch again, just to get away from him.

Eiji wallows in the extra attention and bounces around proclaiming he has three best friends -- four counting that no-good continent-hopping Echizen. Momo is flattered by it and Oishi is tolerant and Fuji is amused.

And then one morning at breakfast Eiji calls them his hos and Fuji opens his eyes at him and Eiji quietly decides to be Kawamura's friend that week.

Momo eventually stops living on their sofa and goes back to annoying Kaidoh and studying for exams, and then Oishi has to buy Eiji burgers for a week to cheer _him_ up.

****

Spring creeps in unannounced, bringing rain, sakura blossoms, tennis, _grades_.

Miraculously, they all survive their first year, although it is touch and go for a while with Oishi, and the others quietly plan for the nervous breakdown they are certain is imminent.

They are scattered around the sidelines of the high-school court in various states of post-exam reaction. Eiji is doing backflips for the first-years. Fuji is plotting with Tomoka. Tezuka is, unbelievably, dozing under a tree with a cheap detective novel open over his face.

"I've failed anatomy for sure." Oishi clutches his head, not even watching the court where Katsuo is testing his leg in a match against one of the second-years. "And possibly biochemistry too."

"You worry too much, senpai," Kaidoh says, arms folded across his chest, gaze sweeping between Katsuo and the unofficial captain, Kachirou. "Don't let him overextend!" he barks suddenly, and Kachirou jumps.

"Yes, Kaidoh-buchou! Katsuo, be careful!"

"It's not like you can do anything about it anyway," Kaidoh continues in conversational tone. He's surprised everyone with his acceptance into Tokyo University. "Exams are already over." There's a slight pause. "I'm sure you did well, senpai."

Oishi makes a strange whimpering sound, and Momo slaps him on the back.

"Viper-buchou is right, you did fine." He grins. "So. When are me and Kaidoh moving in?"

None of them have ever seen Tezuka sit up so fast. The novel tumbles away to the grass. "Thirty laps!" he snaps, and every second- and third-year on the court starts for the gate before they remember.

****

It ends like this:

Eiji and Fuji agree to share a bedroom so that Oishi can move back into his original room and Momo can have the smallest. Inui sets up an elaborate plan which he calculates has the best chance of Kaidoh agreeing to split the attic 40-60 (Inui has more stuff), only to be foiled when Kaidoh agrees on the first hint. Echizen sends an actual letter with complete sentences and punctuation and everything, congratulating them. And Oishi does not fail anatomy.

Oishi in fact places thirty-second in a class of five hundred, and Eiji hits him with his own textbooks for worrying them all for nothing, and Kawamura makes sushi to celebrate the end of their first official year as responsible adults.

Then they get drunk (even Tezuka, and not because anyone spiked his drink) and Inui throws up in the fish tank and when Tezuka's parents show up unannounced in the morning to take him for breakfast he has to explain why there are fish swimming in the kitchen sink and why there is udon on the ceiling and why Eiji, who passed out first, has the kanji for pussy written on his forehead in black marker.

It's quite possibly the best story he's ever told, and he thinks he'd like to tell it forever.

****

(When it's time to renew their lease Fuji does not have to forge Tezuka's name, but it's Fuji so he does anyway.)


End file.
